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Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

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Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#91

Post by mhoad »

sqrt17 wrote: post #81
mhoad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Flutter for web had its 1.0 release a matter of weeks ago. It’s very impressive with what they have done so far but let’s see where it goes. The amount of potential there is truly huge.

Agree that it's exciting to see, but what's the actual potential? Flutter developing into a latter-day Macromedia Flash?

It’s genuinely hard to tell if you are serious about this or not. Either way it somehow perfectly encapsulated the kind of thing this website is famous for. Congratulations?

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#92

Post by westurner »

aitchnyu wrote: post #85
westurner wrote: post #33

Self-hosting (compilers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(compilers) : > In computer programming, self-hosting is the use of a program as part of the toolchain or operating system that produces new versions of that same program—for example, a compiler that can compile its own source code

How big of a milestone is self-hosting for a language?

The wikipedia article lists quite a few languages for which there are self-hosting compilers.

JS can already write more JS. Are there advantages and risks introduced by this new capability for browser-hosted (?) WASM LLVM to compile WASM?

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#93

Post by enos_feedler »

Stevvo wrote: post #64
enos_feedler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very Cool!

In that specific situation I find it very uncool. It's targeted only by C++, a language that is far too complex to have any business being used as a scripting language to make needles move on a virtual altimeter. You get all of the drawbacks with none of the benefits of a C++.

I don’t find it uncool at all. Well we have to start somewhere. Don’t you think this usage of WebAssembly is at least providing some feedback into it’s ecosystem to make improvements for next time? Id rather have developers choosing webassembly even if the implementation doesnt meet our expectations yet

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#94

Post by zackees »

aphextron wrote: post #37

What is the state of the world with wasm at this point? It seems like it's been this huge tease for 10 years now, promising that we'll be able to build web apps in any language. But as far as I'm aware, garbage collection and DOM access is still nonexistent.

Funny story, in 2013 I was working for the Google Earth team. A new clean slate version of Google Earth was in the works (which has been released since) and this was at the time that wonderful demos were being made with asm.js

I convinced one of the engineers to try compiling it in emscripten. It was a total success, running at 45 fps. The middle manager got so excited about this that he decided to make a full push for this version of google earth to be used since it was truly cross platform product running in the browser at near native speed.

The portable Native client / webassembly team caught wind that this was happening and convinced management to kill the project. The middle manager who was overly excited about this technology, was also let go.

All this to make way for web assembly which was “right around the corner” but actually wasn’t (back in 2013). Today web assembly is essentially doing the same thing that asm.js was doing 8 years ago.

If Google had not messed up this decision it would have really been a trailblazer for other companies to follow suit.

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#95

Post by FractalHQ »

reader_mode wrote: post #58
aphextron wrote: post #37

What is the state of the world with wasm at this point? It seems like it's been this huge tease for 10 years now, promising that we'll be able to build web apps in any language. But as far as I'm aware, garbage collection and DOM access is still nonexistent.

TBH DOM is garbage for building apps, but if you need to use it it's clear that it's built for JavaScript. TypeScript made JS manageable and there's so much work in the JS ecosystem arround DOM interaction, I sincerely doubt you'll see anything come out of this. I haven't looked at Blazor/MAUI but having experienced MS frontend tech in Silverlight and Xamarin, I'll take the JS/DOM any day. Ideally WASM would expose l…

You would love Svelte. It makes the entire web ecosystem look and feel like the dark ages in comparison.

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#96

Post by FractalHQ »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #60
aphextron wrote: post #37

What is the state of the world with wasm at this point? It seems like it's been this huge tease for 10 years now, promising that we'll be able to build web apps in any language. But as far as I'm aware, garbage collection and DOM access is still nonexistent.

It probably needs a killer app. To me it feels like it's a solution looking for a problem.

Figma is pretty killer

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#97

Post by CharlesW »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #60
aphextron wrote: post #37

What is the state of the world with wasm at this point? It seems like it's been this huge tease for 10 years now, promising that we'll be able to build web apps in any language. But as far as I'm aware, garbage collection and DOM access is still nonexistent.

It probably needs a killer app. To me it feels like it's a solution looking for a problem.

Pyodide is pretty amazing. https://pyodide.org/en/stable/

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#98

Post by jhgb »

FractalHQ wrote: post #95
reader_mode wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH DOM is garbage for building apps, but if you need to use it it's clear that it's built for JavaScript. TypeScript made JS manageable and there's so much work in the JS ecosystem arround DOM interaction, I sincerely doubt you'll see anything come out of this. I haven't looked at Blazor/MAUI but having experienced MS frontend tech in Silverlight and Xamarin, I'll take the JS/DOM any day. Ideally WASM would expose l…

You would love Svelte. It makes the entire web ecosystem look and feel like the dark ages in comparison.

Svelte made me want to have time to write a new Common Lisp framework. Really, that's how one should look like, at least as far as the results on the client side are concerned.

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#99

Post by heavyset_go »

tyingq wrote: post #56
heavyset_go wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your language is supported by LLVM, then Emscripten can compile it to WASM.

Yes, but for interpreted language 'X', are the created artifacts of a practical size to send down the wire for an actual production site? The idea being that as WASM adds higher level primitives, that size gets smaller.

Sorry, I misread your comment. I thought you wrote that only "small languages", or Lua, can be compiled to WASM.

Re: Wasm3 compiles itself (using LLVM/Clang compiled to WASM)

#100

Post by tachyonbeam »

moonchild wrote: post #69
kindofajsdev wrote: post #10

I'm a newer dev so pardon my ignorance. Is webassembly the new, more open JVM? Feels like that write once, run everywhere but this time with any(most) mainstream language.

I certainly would not say ‘more open’. It is newer, but that's a mark against it, not for it. It lacks most of java's ‘batteries’—there are projects like WASI that try to resolve this at a low level, but they miss the point somewhat. On the other hand, wasm is saddled with fewer assumptions about the type of code that will run on it. Wasm has generally poorer performance, which is mostly (though not entirely) an arti…

Why do you say that WASI misses the point? (genuinely curious)
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